Stabilising the pharmacy sector and bridging the funding gap will be Community Pharmacy England’s (CPE’s) top priority ahead of contract negotiations, said CPE chief executive Janet Morrison.
Despite ‘significant’ uplifts in the 2025/26 Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) any positive impact has been ‘practically wiped out’ by national minimum wage increases and inflation said Ms Morrison at the Sigma UK Conference on 9 November, held at the London Heathrow Marriott Hotel.
Although the contract CPCF with single activity fee (SAF) rose by 19p per item and the medicines margin increased from £850m to £900m, Ms Morrison said: ‘There isn’t a drop of efficiency left to be squeezed out of community pharmacy.’
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And despite CPE’s desire to build high quality services within community pharmacy – including an independent prescribing service – she said ‘you can’t keep adding more and more’ services to a ‘collapsing’ industry.
Yet despite these financial challenges, community pharmacy has a ‘compelling case for investment’, she said. ‘We deliver clinical services that relieve pressure on frontline services, we are the most efficient part of the NHS, we offer great value for money, and we have our doors open all the time.’
Community pharmacy could also do more to support patients with long term health conditions but only if pharmacy teams are able to work at the top of their licenses, she added.
Ms Morrison also revealed that it is currently ‘harder to do business’ with NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), due to ‘conflict’ between two organisations.
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This makes having a unified voice even more important. ‘[The government] is doing the difficult task of turning the 10-year plan into a prioritised implementation plan. We need to be clear about what we want but also get the government to be clearer about their choices and how we build a roadmap,’ she said.
Chair of the National Pharmacy Association (NPA), Olivier Picard, also speaking at the Sigma UK Conference, said that if independent prescribing is not embedded into the next pharmacy contract, it will be a ‘first class burial for our sector’.
He issued a ‘plea’ to Ms Morrison to ensure this happens and not accept a deal that excludes independent prescribing.
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Following the announcement that Community Pharmacy England (CPE) will change its composition to ‘better reflect’ the make-up of the sector, three new representatives have joined the committee.
Managing director of Jardines (UK) Ltd, Has Modi, and superintendent pharmacist of Pearl Chemist Group, Mayank Patel, have become the first members nominated by the Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA). And Owner of Healthy-U Pharmacy and member of Sussex LPC, Dervis Gurol, has been chosen to take up the additional interim independent representative place on the committee.
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